Liu Zaifu: Selected Critical Essays Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Liu Zaifu: Selected Critical Essays Edited by Howard Y. F. Choy Jianmei Liu LEIDEN | BOSTON Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Cover illustration: Alan Z. Huang’s painting, “A Scholar in the Bamboo Forest”. Depicted is a scholar who chose to forge his own path and discover the vivid aesthetic of the bamboo forest, an abstract space allow- ing free contemplation and creativity. Fleeing from the dogmatic factionalism of an outside world, here he is able to engage intellectually with the seven aesthetic spirits who embody various aspects of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010823 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISBN 978-90-04-44911-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-44912-1 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Contents Foreword: “Standing Alone atop the Mountain; Walking Freely under the Sea” vii David Der-wei Wang Acknowledgments xxi Introduction 1 Liu Jianmei and Howard Y. F. Choy part 1 Literary History 1 Literary History as Paradox 27 Translated by Howard Y. F. Choy 2 The End of Modern Chinese Revolutionary Literature 46 Translated by Steven Day 3 From the Monologic Era to the Polyphonic Era An Outline of Forty Years of Literary Development in Mainland China 93 Translated by Ke Wei and Torbjörn Lodén part 2 Cultural Criticism and Literary Theory 4 Traditional Chinese Culture’s Designs on Humanity 119 Translated by Sabina Knight 5 On the Stylistic Revolution of Literary Criticism in the 1980s 134 Translated by Ann Huss 6 Farewell to the Gods Contemporary Chinese Literary Theory’s Fin-de-siècle Struggle 169 Translated by Steven Day 7 Literature Exiling the State 185 Translated by Torbjörn Lodén Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access vi Contents 8 The Dimensions of Modern Chinese Literature and Their Limitations 197 Translated by Eileen J. Cheng part 3 Modern and Contemporary Chinese Writers 9 Lu Xun and Chinese/Foreign Culture 255 Translated by Alan Berkowitz and Haili Kong 10 Miracle and Tragedy in Modern Chinese Literature In Honor of Lu Xun’s 120th Birthday 270 Translated by Lianying Shan 11 Eileen Chang’s Fiction and C. T. Hsia’s A History of Modern Chinese Fiction 294 Translated by Yunzhong Shu 12 Escape of the Mental Prisoner In Honor of Gao Xingjian 328 Translated by Nicole Elizabeth Barnes 13 A Comparative Study of Gao Xingjian and Mo Yan 338 Translated by Jessica Yeung Postscript: Translation, Quotation, and Expatriation 350 Howard Y. F. Choy Selected Bibliography 359 Index 367 Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access foreword “Standing Alone atop the Mountain; Walking Freely under the Sea” David Der-wei Wang 王德威 In the early morning of June 4, 1989, troops of the People’s Liberation Army stormed into Tian’anmen Square in Beijing. They opened fire on thousands of demonstrators who refused to vacate despite earlier warnings of a military crackdown. Within a few hours, the troops had taken over the square, putting an end to the largest democracy movement in the history of the People’s Republic of China. What ensued was a massive manhunt for the activists rumored to be responsible for the movement. Among the targeted names was Liu Zaifu 劉再復 (1941–). Liu was the director of the Institute of Literature at the National Academy of Social Sciences, the leading literary institution of China, and one of the most influential critics in the “New Era” after the Cultural Revolution. His name was associated with national literary and cultural events and his works, such as “On Literary Subjectivity” (“Lun wenxue zhutixing” 論文學主體性) and A Treatise of Character Composition (Xingge zuhe lun 性格組合論) were best-sellers among a generation of Chinese youth yearning for intellectual inspiration. After the June 4 crackdown, Liu’s life took unexpected twists and turns. Upon hearing of his impeding arrest, Liu fled Beijing in extreme haste, first taking shelter in Guangzhou and then traveling to Hong Kong through a secret channel. In the following years, he exiled himself from Asia to Europe and North America, finally settling down in the United States. With his prominent profile in China, Liu could have led the expatriate community against the Chinese government, but he chose to lie low and concentrate on scholarship. In the ensuing three decades, he has produced dozens of books, articles, and essays, some of which, including Farewell to Revolution (Gaobie geming 告別 革命), have become instant classics. But in terms of personal engagement and reflective intensity, his forthcoming Five Autobiographical Accounts (Wu shi zizhuan 五史自傳) outstrips his other, prior work.1 In lieu of a foreword of the conventional kind, the following will be a read- ing of Liu’s Five Autobiographical Accounts which I believe best serves the pur- pose of this volume. Liu’s autobiography offers a comprehensive coverage of 1 The title of this article and all quotations of Liu Zaifu are from his forthcoming book, Wu shi zizhuan, 5 vols. (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2017–). Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access viii foreword his career and thought at different stages, narrated in such a way as to induce not resonance but diacritical (self-)examination. Insofar as the volume aims to introduce a contemporary scholar best known for his dialogical inclination, my reading of Five Autobiographical Accounts represents not only a personal dialogue with Liu but also a prelude to the writings, repercussions indeed, of the volume in response to Liu’s “calls to arms” in post-socialist China. Liu’s autobiography is composed of five volumes, each recounting his past from a unique angle—his writing career, his intellectual metamorphosis, his spiritual pilgrimage, his sociopolitical engagement, and above all, his mistakes and regrets over the years. The result is a composite narrative with multiple threads that complement and contradict one another. If conventional auto- biographical writing seeks to streamline its author’s experiences into a coher- ent sequence, Liu has rendered a self-portrait in a critical dialogue not only with the world but also with himself—practicing his own theory of “character composition.” Liu’s autobiography also evokes multiple historical associations. The year 2019 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the June Fourth democracy move- ment as well as Liu’s self-exile, the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (1949), and most important, the centennial of the May Fourth Movement (1919). Juxtaposed against one another, these dates compel us to reflect on the high hopes and bitter outcomes, grand projects and failed expectations that informed China’s century-long pursuit of modernity. Most importantly, the autobiography also takes on a more subtle, literary dimension. In light of his immersion in the study of The Dream of the Red Chamber (Hong lou meng 紅樓夢) in recent years, Liu may well have found in the twist of his own fate in 1989 an uncanny parallel to the drastic change of plot direction of the magnum opus, starting in chapter 80. Looking back at the popularity and prestige he enjoyed in academia throughout the 1980s, fol- lowed by years of trials overseas, he must have come to a very personal under- standing of the vanities and disillusions Stone undergoes in The Dream of the Red Chamber: having completed his own lesson in sentimental education, he is eager to seek what he calls the “second phase of his life” (di er shengming 第二生命). 1 Farewell to Revolution Liu was born in a peasant family in southern Fujian. During his formative years, he witnessed China in transformation at every level. And as he describes, he experienced three grave losses in his life: the loss of his father in childhood, Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access foreword ix the loss of access to books during the Cultural Revolution, and the loss of his mother country after 1989. Liu vividly recalls how his mother struggled to hold the family together after the passing of his father, and how he worked to prove himself despite all adversities throughout his school years. He was a voracious reader wherever he was. After graduating from the Chinese depart- ment at Xiamen University, he was enlisted to join the editorial team of the Beijing-based magazine New Construction (Xin jianshe 新建設) in 1963—the first step of his career. Up to this point, Liu’s story reads like a socialist version of a bildungsroman: a native son from the Deep South defies the odds and makes it to the capi- tal, carrying great expectations for himself and his nation.